Time to kill some myths about this profession.

There's a lot of bad information floating around about what PAs do and what getting here takes, and some of it comes from people who should know better. So I'm going through the ones I hear most and telling you what's actually true.

"PA school is easier than med school." No. It's shorter. Those are not the same thing, and the compression is exactly what makes it brutal.

"PAs can switch specialties whenever they want." There is real flexibility here, more than most professions, but it isn't unlimited and it gets harder the longer you're in one field.

I also get into what patients actually think about seeing a PA, which is usually much less dramatic than students fear, and whether PAs really operate.

What I cover:

• Whether PA school is easier than medical school
• How much specialty flexibility PAs really have
• What patients think when they're scheduled with a PA
• PAs in the operating room and what that involves
• Where these myths come from
• What I wish someone had told me before I applied

Resources:

Free Application Timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Pre-PA Counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Pre-PA Academy: https://prepaclub.thepaplatform.com/landing/academy

Mentioned in this episode:

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Alright, y', all, we're gonna get right to today's episode where I'm going to be talking about myths about the PA profession.

Mythbusters, PA Profession Edition.

Here we go.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club Podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

I want to thank mypa Resource and.

PA School Prep for sponsoring the Prepa Club Podcast.

So my PA Resource is a personal statement editing service that edits only PA school essays, only edited by PAs and most of us have admissions experience, so I am one of the editors.

Definitely check them out if you need help with your content, grammar, flow, making sure that you are on track for turning in your application.

And you can use the Code futurepa for a discount on any of their service options.

PA School Prep is an online course that focuses on the anatomy, physiology and med terms that you'll need for PA school to make sure you feel confident going into that first semester and that you are able to handle what PA school throws at you.

So check that [email protected] and also use the code futurepa for a discount there.

Hey guys, welcome to the Pre PA Club Podcast.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry, and if I sound a little different, it's because I'm slightly hoarse and kind of losing my voice.

That's what I get from talking to too many Pre PA Clubs this week.

But I love it.

I'm not stopping and hopefully my voice just comes back.

But I will spare you guys from hearing too much of me talking today and we'll jump right into our presentation.

Now.

This is actually a presentation I did for a Pre PA Club and so the talk is Myth Busters and just kind of going through some of the preconceived notions about the PA profession and talking about what those look like in the real world.

So I hope you enjoy this.

If you are part of a Pre PA Club or a Pre PA Club leader, we have some resources for you that you may find helpful.

I am happy to speak at your club.

It's free.

Sometimes people ask me how much I charge nothing.

I love doing it.

So if you need a speaker for your Pre PA Club, please let me know.

I'm happy to do it.

My coaches like to speak to Pre PA Clubs and we have some other connections, you know, to people.

If you need speakers for your club, we also have a Pre PA Club Leaders Facebook group and if you look that up on Facebook, you should find it.

If not, shoot me a message and I can get you the link.

But if you are involved with the exec board or leadership of your Pre PA club, we would love to have you in that group to connect.

We had a meeting with about 20 pre PA club leaders about a month ago, and it was really great just to bounce ideas off of each other and kind of hear from different clubs how you guys do things and what works, what doesn't.

I think together we can definitely, you know, make everyone's club a little bit stronger.

So if you are interested in that, let me know and then I hope you enjoy this talk.

Before we jump in, I wanted to let you know about our next Day in the Life event.

Oh, and I forgot something really important.

Hold on.

So next week in general is PA Week.

Sometimes I lose track of the dates, but next week is PA Week.

So it's technically, if you look at the calendar, Monday through Monday.

So October, I think fifth through 12th, or maybe the sixth.

But that's kind of when PA Week is every single year.

And so this year, I have some really cool stuff planned.

I have a ton of giveaways planned.

We're gonna have a different giveaway every single day.

I'm talking, like, scrubs, stethoscopes, CME stuff, study tools, of course, interview stuff.

So lots of great giveaways next week.

And I'm gonna be doing some takeovers on different accounts.

But make sure you are following the PA platform on Instagram next week week.

And then on next Thursday, we have our day in the Life with Kristen, who is a critical care and pulmonology pa. You're going to hear from her on the podcast very soon, but if you want to join us for that, you can click the link in the bio to sign up.

It's completely free.

We'd love to have you there.

And there will be a replay if you are registered as well.

So we look forward to that next Thursday night at 8pm Eastern.

And yeah, it should be a fun week with PA Week.

There's gonna be so much stuff on social media, and I hope that if you work with a pa, do something sweet for them, celebrate them.

I'm sure it would, like, make their day or make their week if you recognize them.

So.

All right, we'll jump in to the talk on PA Myth Busters.

I hope other people watch that show and y' all don't just think I'm like, some crazy weirdo.

But all right, thanks for listening, guys.

And if you enjoy this episode and this Podcast, I would love if you would follow and subscribe on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen and leave a review, preferably five stars.

If you don't think it's five star quality, let me know and I will try to fix stuff.

If you think this audio sounds scorpion scratchy, I think that's probably just my voice today, but hopefully next week that will be better.

In talking to pre PA clubs and figuring out kind of what I think is helpful or what you guys want to know or would be helpful to know, I put together a pretty straightforward presentation that I titled mythbusters about the PA profession.

And I actually haven't given this talk to any club.

So y' all tell me if you hate it.

But I think if you're gonna go into a profession and a job, it's important to kind of have a realistic idea of things that you can expect.

And around the PA profession there's so much variety.

So I work in dermatology and so my day to day life and schedule looks completely different than, let's say, my like, error colleagues.

And so there are a lot of generalizations that are made about the PA profession.

Sometimes that can get skewed a little bit.

And so I'm going to try to dispel some of those myths.

I don't obviously don't want to be discouraging about the profession at all because I think I made a great choice.

But you guys are at a stage where you're probably kind of maybe deciding, making sure you're all in on this and that it's 100% what you want to do.

And the profession is always changing.

And Covid has been kind of a.

Huge.

Shifter for the profession and just kind of how PAs are utilized and raising a lot of awareness about the profession, which is important.

So I have, I think, can I share my presentation?

We'll see if it works.

Yes.

You might have to ask me, because I'm the host, to have permission.

So let's try that.

See what happens when I try to do this.

Okay.

Yeah, it says it's disabled.

I don't know if you can make me like a. Oh, it looks like it's letting me know.

Okay, perfect.

Great.

Okay.

Can y' all see that?

Yes.

Perfect.

Okay.

I hope I remember what I put in here because this is a while back, but I'm excited to be able to actually give it.

So like Sierra mentioned, I run a website called the PA Platform.

It's for pre PA students primarily.

And it I started five years ago, so I'VE been a PA now for six years just as a blog to answer a lot of the questions that I had throughout the process.

I know it's confusing.

It's still confusing, what, 10 years later from when I did it.

I think it may even be more confusing now just because there's even more requirements like to give you a frame of reference.

When I applied to PA school they hadn't even separated out healthcare experience and patient care experience yet.

Those were one category and so now those are separate categories.

And so a lot has some has changed, but a lot of it has stayed the same too.

So we do blog posts, we have a Facebook group, newsletters that go out every month.

I think it's in the podcast every Friday, I'm not sure, but lots of stuff if you don't follow along on social media, Instagram, where we post most things most promptly.

So we're at the PA platform on there and we do have a virtual shadowing coming up October 8th.

I'll be posting the sign up link for that.

It's with a critical care pulmonology PA and so she'll be talking to us about her profession and her role.

So some stuff to check out.

Just if you go to the PA platform.com you'll find all kinds of resources that may help you.

Alright, let's get to our myths.

So number one, PA school is easier to get into than medical school.

And I don't know if this is one that y' all have heard these.

These may be things that you've heard, maybe like your classmates say or your teachers or advisors or family or friends.

And I think it's kind of interesting.

The PA community is a very small one and the pre PA community is a small one and a lot of people just don't get it.

Like if you're not, you know, on this path and kind of researching it and learning about it, people just don't really understand.

So the differences in PA school and medical school, which I don't know if anyone's on the fence, I think it's completely reasonable to have considered medical school.

If you are planning on going to PA school.

That just makes sense.

The professions are similar in what you do.

In the end goal.

The path to get there is very different and there are some differences in the actual careers.

You don't necessarily have to, in my opinion have considered nursing school to go to PA school.

Those are kind of different tracks and so you're not always going to be on that nursing path.

I was a biology major.

I went to uga.

And so by the time at the end of freshman year that I kind of figured out that I wanted to do pa, I was still deciding and then I shadowed, I was already on this path towards that type of program.

If I had started undergrad with nursing in mind, it may have been quicker for me to go the NP route, but that wasn't where my path was headed, that wasn't where my goals were.

And so at that point it would have been strange for me to like completely shift over to a nursing track.

When you compare the requirements for PA school and medical school, a lot of the classes are the same.

But medical school in general, and these are all generalizations, don't require as many specific classes as PA schools.

If you've started to research programs, which I recommend, is the very first thing you do, you'll see that all of these different PA schools have all these different requirements.

There's a ton of little nuances.

You know, this school wants organic chemistry, this school wants organic chemistry or biochemistry.

This one wants organic chemistry and biochemistry.

This school, the courses expire after five years.

And so there's a bunch of stuff that you have to be researching and double checking and triple checking.

Whereas for medical school there are not as many requirements.

So when I was in college and during my bio major, my then boyfriend was also a bio major, but he was on the medical school track.

So when we both graduated from uga, I went to PA school, he went to medical school.

So it was interesting, like seeing the different things we had to do.

So he didn't, he never took anatomy during undergrad.

It was not required for him to get into medical school and it was not required for our biology degree at UGA specifically because it was not a degree course.

It didn't even count as a science elective for me.

And I couldn't sign up for the class at uga, I had to take it at home, at university, at home, because over the summer, because I just couldn't get in.

And so that was a big difference.

Research is a lot more important for medical school than it is for PA school.

And that hands on patient experience is a lot more important for PA school than it is for medical school.

So when you get into PA school, they are not really going to do a refresher on a lot of that stuff.

They expect you to have a good base knowledge, good experience and be ready to go versus medical school.

A lot of the time you're going to redo a bunch of that.

So they're going to redo Some biochemistry and some microbiology, but in PA school, you're not really going to get that.

So when it comes to easier to get into programs, technically for PA school, you're looking at more requirements.

The average GPA does tend to be a little bit lower for what's accepted to PA school, but there also aren't as many spots.

And so there's a lot more competition to be one of those people who gets a spot in PA school as well.

Okay.

PAs have lateral mobility and more flexibility.

This is something that.

So I edit a lot of personal statements, do a lot of mock interviews, and this comes up a lot.

So the idea of lateral mobility is a term that means that PAs can switch specialties.

So you're trained as a PA in a general model where you are primarily, you know, have more focus on the primary care areas versus something like I did dermatology, we only got two weeks of dermatology in PA school.

That's not a lot.

So obviously I had to learn a lot on the job because my two weeks of derm two years before I got my job was not adequate.

And so this term of lateral mobility does mean that you can switch specialties without having to have residency.

So like in medical school, you do you complete medical school, you do a residency that is at minimum three years.

Some of the crazy specialties like neurosurgery can be like 12 years or something wild.

But you do these specialties and then you get board certified in that area.

So if you wanted to switch, let's say from internal medicine to dermatology, you would have to go back and do another three year residency to be able to do that.

Versus for me, I would just have to find a job and switch jobs and get trained on that job.

After being in dermatology for six years, I can't say that I could just hop on over to cardiology.

I would need someone to definitely hold my hand and train me and help me.

I'd be doing a lot of training at home by myself and relearning of a lot of information to make that jump.

But yes, technically I could do it.

So I think some pre pas think that this is something that happens all the time, that PAs are just, you know, jumping around all over the place.

But what tends to happen, and I've seen this in my class and with a lot of my colleagues, you find your niche, you find your area, and then you stick with it.

So that jumping around may happen a little bit more at the beginning with, you know, somebody gets out, they get A job in one area.

After a year or two, they figure out that's not really the best place for them.

They switch to another job.

And they figure out that, let's say they switched, like one of my friends, from vascular surgery to surgical oncology.

Like, that's her thing, and that's what she's good at and what she enjoys.

And so most likely, unless she had to, she won't change from that again.

There's also the idea that PAs, you know, work all these different jobs all at the same time, and that's also a very small subset of PAs who do that.

If y' all are working, you know, getting your patient care hours working in medicine is kind of exhausting.

It's a little bit tiring at times.

Just working with a lot of people.

It's very physical, and so you need that downtime and rest time as well.

So the PA I work with in my dermatology office, she is a PA that actually does that, and it's interesting.

So she worked in dermatology for a few years, and then she went and worked in an ICU setting for a few years, and now she's back in derm, but she still picks up weekend shifts where she'll go and do ICU or hospital medicine.

And so, you know, that's helping her pay off her loans.

And it's something she can do easily because she has that knowledge, which, again, for me to do that, I would need to be trained because I've only ever done derm.

But those are some options you kind of have as a pa. Just know that it's not necessarily the norm.

And to me, this shouldn't be your primary reason for wanting to be a pa.

It should be the job itself, not the perks of the job, like these things that people talk about.

The flexibility part, this is kind of a soapbox that I get on, because this is something just to consider at any level.

But, you know, you choose your flexibility and your priorities, no matter what your profession is or no matter what letters are behind your name.

So if.

If that is.

I think the perk to being a PA is that you don't go through residency, even though there are more PA residencies coming up.

And so you're out working in the world a little bit quicker, and you can kind of move on with your life compared to medical school.

But at the end of the day, like, as a doctor, as a pa, as a nurse, as a nurse practitioner, you have some say in your schedule and how much you work.

So at my previous Job, my very first job, I worked more than any of the doctors.

I worked more hours.

I was there more.

I took call and that was their choice.

Like they had families and wanted to be at home and that was fine.

After I had a child who's now two, when she was a year old, I decided for me, I need to be home more, I need more flexibility.

But that meant leaving that job because they weren't able to accommodate that for me.

So, you know, that's something like the jobs are out there and you can choose that flexibility whether you're a doctor or a PA or anything else.

So just something to keep in mind, you know, if you're trying to kind of decide things or on the fence with stuff, so.

Oh, I guess I kind of already talked about this one too.

But PAs have better work, life balance.

And this is, this is just the same idea.

So, you know, you, you choose that.

And I think what I've learned just in life and being a mom and a wife and a PA is that balance, like, it's never going to be a perfect balance.

We think that it, you know, we can do everything 100% and you're, you're never going to be there doing that.

Like you're always going to be sacrificing probably some part of you for something.

And so I think just having those goals in mind and knowing, like, just giving your best where you're at, and that's, that's what I've been able to find with switching to a new office and going part time is, you know, when I'm at work, I can give 100% to work.

And then when I'm at home, I give 100% at home and I'm not thinking about work.

Whereas when I was trying to do it all and find this perfect balance, I just felt like I was failing at everything.

Like I wasn't being a good pa, I wasn't being a good mom, I wasn't being a good wife, I wasn't good at the PA platform.

And so by kind of giving up some of that and focusing and switching jobs, it made it a lot better.

So PAs don't have any administrative duties.

I've actually gotten a few messages and emails about this one this year, like asking, you know, about the paperwork side of things and what PAs do as far as that goes and what that looks like.

And this is one where it's gonna vary so much based on your job and where you're at.

So in private practice, we don't really have any administrative duties in my office.

But in another office, PAs might.

I've known PAs who are in management and administrative roles where they're either training other PAs working on the schedule, trying to, you know, optimize how PAs are used in their setting.

We have an awesome PA locally who is on the AAPA.

She's a delegate for them and she has pretty much always been administrative.

She does some academic stuff, she does administrative stuff.

She's opened Urgent Cares and helped to kind of optimize how PAs are used in those settings.

She was the like head PA in a hospital where she was kind of the liaison between the head honchos of the hospital and all the PAs.

And so if that's something you're interested in, like you have this interest in those leadership and administrative roles, they are out there and that's something that you can definitely work your, work your way into.

There are, you know, masters of healthcare administration programs.

There are some PA programs that have a built in MBA or you can do a master's of public health to get that kind of extra education that will help you to move into those higher positions in administration.

And I think having interest in other areas like that is what can help you prevent burnout and being willing to kind of step up into decision making roles.

I mean, I will say, like in my jobs I've always been somewhat included in decisions about the office and about things like what products we carry, what services we offer, how we do our schedules, how we organize things.

And I've never felt like I couldn't go to my physician or office manager with any ideas I had about how to make things better.

And so that's, that's cool.

That's the kind of relationship and position I think you want to look for.

So apparently I talk more about what I put in these slides.

I need to review them.

But PAs can't hold leadership positions.

And to go off of the administration part there, there are tons of leadership opportunities for PAs, especially within state organizations, specialty organizations.

And that is what helps the PA profession in general in advocating for your profession and for, for students, for pre PA students, Penn students, at every level, you can have leadership.

I actually just did a really cool podcast interview that'll be up in the next probably month with a pre pa.

So she's a little bit older, she has kids and she is, I think she's up in like the Northeast, but she is pre pa. She was a dietitian and is switching careers.

But she got involved with her state society as a pre PA and so she reached out and wanted to share that because she was like, this has been such a great opportunity for me to meet PAS and get to shadow and get involved and get leadership and volunteer experience.

And so I think sometimes you think like, oh, I won't be able to do that until I'm a PA student or I won't be able to do that until I'm a pa, but you actually just never know until you ask and until you start looking for those opportunities.

And so there's, there's a lot of need for leadership in the PA profession and definitely a lot of positions that you can kind of work towards once you are in the profession or even now.

Like, anything you can do to get involved.

Okay, so PAs are in high demand and can find jobs easily.

So you're like, oh, this is like, this is a myth.

So in, in some regards, this is completely true.

You know, I think I, I'm still seeing listings for PAs.

The jobs are out there, but this is one area that Covid has really changed things for now.

And I think my personal opinion is that things will get back to normal.

Jobs are opening up.

But what, what ended up happening?

I don't know if any of y' all were in patient care experience experience or patient care jobs where you were furloughed or, you know, not needed at the time, but the same thing happened to PAs.

My office closed for about a month where I would go in once a week for two hours just to answer messages and do a little telemedicine.

I was very lucky not to be furloughed or fired, but some PAs were.

And so that was kind of eye opening, I think.

But even, even doctors were furloughed and nurse practitioners, like it was happening across the board.

This was just such an unprecedented event.

So hopefully by the time you are applying and you are pas, nothing like this happens again and you're able to find those jobs.

When I graduated, there were tons of jobs.

And the other caveat to this is, depends on where you're looking.

So in a suburban area, it's not highly saturated with experienced PAs looking for jobs versus my classmates who went to Atlanta to look for jobs.

They struggled.

So you weren't as likely to find like a dermatology job there because there were more experienced PAs, you'd have to start in these kind of like entry level jobs to get your foot in the door, get some experience experience and then move into the more desirable positions or areas or hospitals.

So I think, I think PAS are still going to be in demand.

There's a lot of talk right now if you're on social media and chatter about how, you know, places are preferring MPs and not hiring PAs.

But a lot of that is location dependent.

And I would look at your state and see what their state laws are or the state you're wanting to practice in.

Here in Georgia, PAs and NPs are exactly the same.

So NPs cannot open practices.

We work with physicians in the exact same way.

So there really isn't, as of right now, a benefit to being an NP versus PA here.

There are some states that are more NP friendly.

And so that may be something to consider if you are, you know, dead set on practicing in a certain state, looking into that before you go through the whole process of PA school and then find that out.

So just talk to some PAs, do some job searches, and at the end of the day, like, jobs are out there.

And so there are a lot of new grads that I've talked to that it took them a little bit longer than they were expecting to find jobs.

They have found them or they haven't.

The ones I've talked to who have don't have jobs yet that graduated in like, May or even August.

They've said, like, I'm being very picky about what I want to do.

Like, I don't just want to accept anything.

I want to find, you know, the right specialty, the right location.

And sometimes to get a job you have to sacrifice some of that, especially at the beginning.

And you can always be job searching.

That's one of the best tips I heard when I was at conferences as like a new grad PA was never stop looking for jobs just so that you know your worth and you know it's out there.

Okay.

Patients don't like seeing PAs.

I don't know if anyone has ever seen an encounter between a patient who did not want to see the pa.

I think this is a myth.

There's.

There's a saying out there that, and I think this might actually be true.

But if a patient sees a bad doctor, they'll go find another doctor.

If they see a bad pa, they will never see a PA again.

And I think, you know, sometimes if you are the very first PA that a patient has ever seen, it is a lot of pressure to make a good impression and show them that you are competent and confident and that you are, you know, what you're doing, because that's something that they can be a little skeptical at first.

But once you kind of show patients what PAs are able to do, and what we're like, they tend to be happy to see PAs and kind of understand that we are able to do a lot of the same things that the doctor can do for them.

And I think my patients know that.

They know that if I have any questions or any issues, I'm going to go get my supervising physician, I'm going to bring her in the room or ask her and call them about it later.

You know, I know my limits of my knowledge and my experience, and I know her experience and when to pull that in and use that.

And she is awesome.

She will drop what she's doing to come see my patients.

It's being in Durham, you know, I get a lot of the new patients and the triages.

I can see the crazy rashes and lesions and weird stuff where, you know, after you've been in it a while, it gets.

Where you're just doing a lot of skin checks and more routine stuff.

So she's always happy to jump in and see, see the weird stuff.

That being said, this is something about the profession that you'll need to be willing to deal with.

You're going to be explaining to patients what you do and explaining, explaining to your family members and friends what exactly a PA is.

So that's just part of.

Doesn't bother me.

I've never been offended by it.

And so that's something, you know, if you feel like that would bother you or kind of, you're unsure about that, it may not be.

You may want to think about kind of what you're doing.

Shadow, talk to some PAs and see how they deal with it too.

PAs can't do surgery.

So this is definitely a myth.

PAs are involved in surgery at all different levels.

Can a PA go in and, you know, crack a chest and do a whole heart transplant by themselves?

Not that I know of, but maybe.

But, you know, it's a teamwork approach.

And this goes back to the profession being team based.

PAs do a lot of, first assisting a lot of opening cases, closing cases in like, or based surgery.

And what I do in dermatology, I do all my own procedures that I feel comfortable with.

So that's all my own biopsies and then excision, so taking out skin cancers and cysts.

And this also goes back to knowledge and kind of knowledge level and being comfortable saying, you know, I don't feel comfortable doing this surgery, having either my supervising physician or a plastic surgeon or Mohs surgeon do it.

But if you're interested in procedures, interested in surgery, there's definitely opportunities out there for PAs.

And you know, it's, it makes sense.

Like as your experience grows, you get more responsibility and you learn more and do more, and so that's something that, that progresses.

So, yeah, like as a brand new grad, was I walking into the derm office doing surgeries?

No.

I spent a whole year where we blocked my schedule and I trained with the physician to make sure I was comfortable, make sure she was comfortable before I really started doing that.

And so there's, there's some learning curves there.

But yeah, PAs can definitely help out in surgery.

And one of the required clinical rotations is actually surgery during PA school.

Okay.

So the doctor has to see all of the PA's patients.

So this is definitely a myth.

But some of this is going to be state dependent too, and insurance dependent.

There's some kind of weird stuff with Medicare about seeing patients and billing, but like how that's done as an office decision and then also state wide.

So in my state, the doctor has to sign off on some of my notes and look at my notes, but she doesn't necessarily have to see all the patients with me.

So we each have our own schedule.

Like Today I saw 27 patients and they were all on my schedule.

I didn't, she didn't see any with me today.

Like, she might see one or two with me a week.

And it kind of feels like when, when I have a crazy day that I have to use her all the time and I feel super needy.

But then we may go a couple weeks where I don't really need her to see anything.

So it's more of just kind of, you know, definitely like a partnership.

She's there if something comes.

Sa.